Samsung 840 EVO mSATA SSD Review

The Samsung 840 EVO mSATA SSD

Samsung use a single PCB design for all of their EVO mSATA drives and on that vary the components used. These drives are just (29.85±0.15) x (50.80±0.15) x Max 3.85 (mm) and at most weigh 10grams, keeping things light for mobile use. The rated average power use is 0.103w with idle of 0.033w and sleep of 2mW.

On the top we find the company branding and on the base an information sticker showing the capacity, serial number, etc. Powering the drive we have Samsung’s latest 3-core MEX controller, also used on the Desktop EVO models with support for TurboWrite (sequential performance boosts) as well as standard features such as TRIM and AES security (256-bit full disk encryption with PSID). User configurable over provisioning is also present. The MEX controller is connected to 512MB of DDR2 cache (Samsung branded) in the 250-500GB models, 1GB on the 1TB, 256MB on the 120GB and for their 128 gigabit NAND flash Samsung opt for 1x nanometer Toggle chips again of their own brand.

Samsung rate the 250-1TB models for 540MB/s sequential read, 520MB/s sequential write and up to 97000-98000 IOPS 4KB Random read with a write spec of up to 88-90k. The warranty is 3-years and when formatted the 1TB drive gives us 931GB of usable space in Windows 8.